Despite Chinatown's shady reputation, it was a tight-knit community whose
residents were familiar with one another. Parents allowed their children, who
were highly cherished (especially since there were so few of them due to the
early lack of women and families), to roam the streets without supervision during
the day. The sense of all of Chinatown as being a children's playground
was deftly captured by the photographer Arnold Genthe, who considered Chinese
children to be some of his favorite subjects.

However, the day was not filled only by play. Chinese culture considers education
to be one of life's most important assets, and Chinatown's children
were schooled in a wide array of subjects. Their textbooks cover not only the
traditional areas of mathematics, grammar, and social studies, but Russian literature
and Confucian philosophy, among other topics. Instructors included Chinese scholars
and teachers as well as Protestant missionaries who sought to convert the Chinese
to Christianity through educational assimilation.

Being segregated from the rest of San Francisco did not mean that Chinatown
was isolated from the rest of the world. There was a constant stream of communication
to Mainland China and other parts of the United States. Separated families and
friends wrote to each other on a consistent basis, and their letters relate
the difficulty of loved ones spending a great deal of time apart. Chinese-language
newspapers were other means of communication, keeping people informed
of happenings in California and around the globe. A number of dailies competed
for the Chinese reading public, but the Chung Sai Yat Po was the oldest
and most prominent of them all. One of its editors, Ng Poon Chew, who ran the
paper during the early 1900s, was even known as "The Chinese Mark Twain."
Ng was a celebrated orator, and spoke on the famed Chatauqua, New York public
speaking circuit.

The use of print media was not restricted to newspapers. Theatres, too, printed
daily programs of their nightly offerings, with photographs accompanying descriptions
of plays and actors. The Chinese of San Francisco had a passion for the theatre.
Local players as well as stars from China performed for packed houses whose
audiences consisted of both Chinese and adventurous Caucasians. Other cultural
doings included literary societies, poetry clubs, and art collectives, many
of whom published or exhibited their collective works.